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GALLERY ARCHIVE

2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010

PLEASE NOTE: Our programming archive is at the moment incomplete. Our apologizes for the inconvenience. We plan to have this online archive complete in the near future.

 

2010


Teri Donovan  Always, Once and Again  Mixed Media, 36" X 48"

Half-Life
July 1 - August 14, 2010
Opening Reception:  Friday, July 9th  7-11 pm

[Essay]

In this exhibition of paintings by Teri Donovan, the artist integrates collaged wallpaper in her works with encaustic painting techniques.  By metaphorically layering past and present, she foreshadows a
future embedded with forgotten remnants.  Donovan's work addresses that tenacious desire for life that guarantees the past's role in the present and future, and simultaneously suggest how the present secures its own place as it moves towards its inevitable fate.

Teri Donovan was born in Paris, Ontario. She received a BFA from York University, and has studied at the University of Toronto, OCAD, and The Maryland Institute College of Art.  Her practice incorporates drawing, painting, and mixed media, and is located in the spaces between what is immediately apparent and that which is obscured or overlooked. She is  represented by The Red Head Gallery in Toronto and her work was featured in Carte Blanche Vol.2:  Painting 2008, a survey of contemporary painting in Canada.

Steeltown is where the artists are by R.M Vaughan
A review of the current exhibition by Teri Donovan in the Globe and Mail

Read the review of Teri Donovan's exhibition at Hamilton Artists Inc.in Canadian Art Magazine

photo:  Katrina Jennifer Bedford

TRANSUBSTANTIATIONS
May 22 to June 26, 2010
Jane Adeney with Chris Adeney (Wax Mannequin),
media collaborator

[brochure]

The exhibition TRANSUBSTANTIATIONS explores the human struggle for transcendence through the predominant visual theme of fire, and the power of transformation: How does myth come into being? How does image become Symbol? What elevates language to kerygma*? The processes and imagery of artistic production act as metaphors for the conditions of imagination and creation.   Over the past two decades, Jane Adeney's selection of forms, processes, and materials has come to reflect her fascination with the rituals through which humanity strives to make sense of human experience on this earth. The medium of clay, its forming and its firing, has impressed its metaphorical charge upon the production of the artist's work, and clay's transformative potential through smoke and fire has provided a long-lasting subtext of meaning in her artistic practice.

* kerygma is the word used by Northrop Frye, in Words With Power, to refer to the charged language of sacred text.

 Jane Adeney has lived and worked in the Hamilton area for the past twenty-five years. She has exhibited widely in public galleries and artist-run centres, and has gained considerable critical respect for her sculptural and installation works comprising of darkly smokefired clay boxes and chests, fitted with domestic and industrial findings that bring with them both formal and associative qualities. Within the constructed containers are revealed, or hidden, various elliptical and enigmatic objects allusive to human passions, fears, and longings. Bathed in warm light, the interiors are often accessed with difficulty or through implicit transgression. 

Archive and Everyday Life
Visual Arts Exhibition May 1 - 15, 2010

Featuring the work of Adrienne Batke, Melissa Carroll, Amanda Delorey, Jeffery Douglas, Keeley Haftner, Megan Hahn, Nicholas Holm, Andrea Kastner, Philip Kingstone, Kegan McFadden, Devon Mordell, Midi Onodera ,Simon Orpana, Malissa Phung, and Maria Whiteman

Opening: Friday, May 7th, 2010 6-8 pm at Hamilton Artists Inc.

[essay]

The Archive and Everyday Life is an adjunct visual arts exhibition exploring the themes of the conference held at McMaster University in May 2010. The conference and art exhibition brings together academics, advocates, artists, and other cultural workers to examine the intersecting fields of archive and everyday life theory. The objective of everyday life theory has been to “rescue the everyday from conventional habits of the mind…to attempt to register the everyday in all its complexities and contradictions.” (Ben Highmore). Archive theory provides a means to explore these structures by “making the unfamiliar familiar,” therefore opening the possibility of generating new forms of critical and artistic practice.

*for more information on individual artists and their works please click on our blog*

Margaret Dragu
Mending Performance
Friday May 14th during the James St North Artcrawl
in the alcove of the corner building
(corner of James St North and Cannon)
161 James St North
Hamilton ON

Margaret Dragu is celebrating her third decade as a performance artist. She has presented her work in galleries, museums, theatres, nightclubs, libraries, universities and site-specific venues including parks, botanical gardens, and public parade routes across Canada, the west and east coast of the United States, and in Western Europe. Margaret is also a film/video artist, writer, choreographer, fitness instructor/personal trainer, and an extremely famous cleaning lady.

Alastair MacLennan (Belfast, Northern Ireland)
In a performance on May 14, 2010
during the James St North Art Crawl, Hamilton

and in a Toronto performance
Wednesday May 12th, 2010  3 to 8 pm
Butterfield Park
Ontario College of Art and Design
100 McCaul St.  Toronto, ON
Presented by FADO
www.performanceart.ca

"Art is the demonstrated wish and will to resolve conflict through action,
be it spiritual, religious, political, personal, social or cultural.  To heal is
to make whole.  As well as ecology of natural environment, there is ecology of mind and spirit.  Each is a layer of the other, interfused, three in one.  The challenge for us today is to live this integration.  Already we are late. Time we have is not so vital as time we make."  Alastair MacLennan


#26 Winter Buffalo  Photo credit:  Jude Norris


The Definition of Bear  Photo credit:  Amin Rehman

Mooswa, Muskwa, PuskwaMoostoos - Digital Creations
with Immemorial Relations

An exhibition of works by Jude Norris
March 6 – April 24th, 2010
Opening:  March 12th  7 to 11 pm

[Essay]

Jude Norris is a (Metis) Plains Cree multi-media artist from Alberta, Canada, currently based in Toronto and NY. The layers of material and meaning in her work mirror the particular dichotomy of living as an Indigenous person in a contemporary colonial environment, but they are also universally accessible and relevant in both aesthetic and metaphor.  She uses a variety of media in creating idiosyncratic juxtapositions of the traditional with the technical, the organic with the manufactured. At times, Norris combines objects that are symbolically, directly, and/or stereotypically connected with Native American culture with elements of Euro-centric creative practice.  She also uses Plains Cree and English language as reflections of the disparate paradigms of aural and literary based cultures. All of these elements become devices that investigate both the positive and negative situations and potentials of cross-cultural communication and evolution. Jude Norris 'collaborates' with objects and images gathered from the land and animals, repositioning them in 'art world' contexts that emphasize their physical beauty, but also poke quiet but serious 'fun' at their misplacement.  Basic qualities of her work include circularity, multiplicity of meaning, and focus on relationship - with land, technology, other beings, and self. However challenging the realities Norris reflects as an artist, she notes the importance of instinct, continuation, commitment, (subtle) humour and celebration that remain fundamental elements of her practice. She strives to make contemporary objects that become more  than the sum of their parts, and whose physical presence can create a deep impact, speaking in multilayered tongues and touching a place beyond conscious through their own 'Good Medicine'.

Crying Cat (Crocodile Tears)   photo credit:  Elizabeth Underhill

Hello Schrödinger?
An exhibition of works by Laura Paolini
January 8 - February 26, 2010
Opening: Friday, January 8th 7 - 11 pm
The artist will be in attendance

[Essay]

Laura Paolini’s work is primarily conceptual and is expressed through media-based installations. An emerging artist and a recent graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design, Paolini’s work has been described as quirky, refreshing and seductive as well as subversively political.

As one of the first works the viewer encounters in the exhibition "Hello, Schrödinger?" at Hamilton Artists Inc., audio embedded in a blowing, inverted hand dryer invites a kind of intimate participation which belies how physical presence (or non presence) is implicated in communication. Animals are used as symbols of desired human qualities and reflect a somewhat unnerving and slightly sinister quality embodied by surrogate, media-activated toy counterparts. In the central work Crocodile Tears: (Crying Cat) the viewer encounters a domestic tableau, within which a mechanical cat cries as he gazes upon the image of his real life, video doppleganger on a nearby television. Captured within this Kantian moment of prolonged and sublime longing, perhaps the cat is aware that it will never be a real cat, and is deeply saddened.

Laura Paolini is also an active writer. Her columns and reviews have appeared in FUSE magazine and other publications nationally and internationally. Her upcoming article about artist Charles Stankivech will be featured in the next issue of musicworks (February 2010). In 2008, Paolini was a resident in the Telus InterActive Art and Entertainment Programme at the Canadian Film Centre’s Media Lab.

2009

 

Hamilton Artists Inc. and the Red Tree Collective present
ReMix Institute - Phase II of The Cuban Exchange
ADRIAN RUMBAUT ANNE MILNE PETER KARUNA
POPEYE’S GOLDEN THEORY SADKO HADZIHASANOVIC
BRYCE KANBARA YANET RAMÍREZ MOLINA
September 11 - October 30, 2009
Curated by Ingrid Mayrhofer

 

Installation shots of one of Massimo Grimaldi's text pieces at Hamilton Artists Inc., (on James St N near Cannon St) presented in collaboration with The Art Gallery of Hamilton.

About the Artist: Massimo Grimaldi was born in 1974 in Taranto, Italy. He lives and works in Milan.

“My works are not roaring tigers, but rather the quicksand that swallowed them down. They examine the functioning of art and the way in which it is perceived, valued, and understood. My research ranges from a continual interrogation of the role of the artist in society, to the power and the limits of aesthetic speculation, to the standards of the production and circulation of images.” Massimo Grimaldi .

About the Exhibition: This installation is presented in conjunction with the exhibition TURN ON: Contemporary Italian Art, part of Vista Italia, the AGH’s celebration of Italian art and culture. TURN ON is curated by Sara Knelman, and on view from June 4 – September 13, 2009.

TURN ON invites three of Italy’s most dynamic contemporary artists to engage viewers in Hamilton. Adrian Paci’s films, Massimo Grimaldi’s texts and Patrick Tuttofuoco’s sculptures are connected by a desire to activate — and be activated by — the world around them. Informed by a consciously global outlook, their works intrude upon and illuminate the possibilities of urban environments.

The text on the hoarding read:

Watery and incapable of wishing to be something. As if joy might never be belonging to us but only escaping from us. Loving each other only because we should have loved before loving. Moving clumsily because clumsiness is our only beauty. Feeling special as though we were living in a song by The Style Council. Withering miserably. Failing feebly. We are not emotional. We are conventional. We don't need a good reason, we only need to have need of one. But we will begin again, pretending to be changed. But knowing that we are still the same. That we are still telling lies the same way. And we will be really cool, true artists, and we will not think of ourselves as being useless. And we will seek to produce so many marvels for those wanting ever so much to be marveled. We will say we are happy, and we will say so finally crying. Finally collapsing.

For more information, please visit: http://www.artgalleryofhamilton.on.ca/ex_current.php#4

suckerpunch
Niki Boghossian, Matthew Dayler, and Andrew McPhail

Using unpredictable materials, the artists drag out both the unusual and the sublime from their sources by bravely taking on the heavyweights of Christianity, male sporting goods and winter apparel, domestic items and thrift store toys in a humourous exploration of constructs of gender and sexuality.

Niki Boghossian graduated from Concordia University in 2007, and has shown her work throughout Montreal and the GTA. She now lives and works in Toronto.

"My work is concerned with the process of understanding issues of gender, power, violence and the body. It is an investigation of energy and the idea that a thing can never be what it claims. The thing is instead in a constant state of flux and when the struggle to become what it is has been won and it reaches the limits of itself it must become its opposite." - Niki Boghossian


Niki Boghossian - Defeated Heavybag, cotton wool, cotton batting, chain, 2007

Matthew Dayler was born and raised in Hamilton. He creates self-portraits in drawings, prints, photography and videos, which are inspired by popular culture and issues of identity. Dayler’s work centers on a wide variety of contemporary imagery relating to the self in juxtaposition with music, graffiti, and gay culture. Matthew Dayler’s work has been exhibited at the Telfair Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia, The Brooks Museum in Memphis Tennessee, and Galerie Edition Schedler in Zurich, Switzerland, among others. Dayler lives in Covington, Kentucky and currently teaches/lectures at the Art Academy of Cincinnati.

"My work promotes individualism, through embracing elements of music specifically dj culture, graffiti, popular news media, and fashion. These days the very things we hold as being sacred are being taken from us and exploited by popular cultures increasing need for the fresh, and new - diluting our sense of what is real and true. My attempt is to question this trust. " - Matthew Dayler


Matthew Dayler Untitled Red Silk-Screen, Acrylic on board, "20 by"20, 2009

Born in 1961, Andrew McPhail hails from Calgary, Alberta and is a graduate of York University with a Masters degree in visual arts. He has exhibited in galleries across Canada and abroad. He currently lives in Hamilton.

"I bought all these socks at the dollar store- about 80 pairs and the cashier at the checkout didn't even ask me what they were for. AND I DON'T EVEN LIKE WHITE SOCKS!" - Andrew McPhail


Andrew McPhail 'not my fault!' mixed media with socks, 2008

The suckerpunch exhibition is an official venue of the Hamilton Pride Festival

Opening:
Friday June 12 2009 during the James St North Art Crawl 7-10 pm Exhibition runs until July 31, 2009
gallery hours: Tues - Fri 12-5 Sat 12-4

[suckerpunch]

Hamilton Artists Inc.
161 James St. North Hamilton, ON (corner of James St N and Cannon) 905 529 3355
inc@hamiltonartistsinc.on.ca

Carbon Interiorities

Friday, May 8th, 7-10 pm (during the James St. North Art Crawl)
An evolving installation using the materials of performance and drawing by Vida Simon begins.

May 12-16, 12-5 pm
The public is invited to drop by the gallery as this performance/installation further unfolds.
(the gallery is closed May 9th-11th)

Wednesday May 13th, 7-8:30 pm
An artist talk by Rachel Echenberg
Friday, May 15th, 4-7 pm
A performance underlining erasure and the invisible by Rachel Echenberg and Thursday, May 14th A performance at several locations (TBA) in Hamilton

Saturday, May 16th, 7-8:30 pm
An artist talk marking the closure of the residency by Vida Simon discussing the performance/
installation at HAI, and past works

May 16 – May 30th, Tues-Fri 12-5, Sat 12-4 pm
An installation of the results of the artists’ work is on view at the gallery

Montreal-based artist Rachel Echenberg works in performance, video and sculpture. Since 1992 her work has been exhibited, performed and screened throughout Canada, Europe, and the US as well as in Chile, Lebanon, Morocco and Japan. At Hamilton Artists Inc., over the course of several hours Rachel Echenberg attempts to slowly erase herself from view. This action aims to put a visual aspect to public invisibility and anonymity. Echenberg investigates live and mediated presence through a body of work that explores vulnerable, intimate and uncontrollable
relationships. She has always been drawn to actions that point towards slow physical and conceptual transformation. She is interested in how proximity and dislocation affect the possibilities for active empathy and productive exchange from the viewer’s distanced perspective.

Vida Simon’s installation/performance work has been presented in a wide range of contexts – galleries, performance festivals, residencies, and site-responsive projects in public and private spaces. Her work has been shown internationally, most recently in Lithuania and Chile. While her work is visually-based, she tries to create situations that undo representation, revealing processes that are normally kept “behind the scenes.” Drawing live often plays a central role in her performances. Vida Simon lives and works in Montreal. For the work in Hamilton, she explores the intersections of drawing, improvisation, and personal archaeology. This slowly—unfolding—space will center on
drawing, yet also incorporate other actions performed at different “stations” in the gallery, forming a cycle of gestures.

Hamilton Artists Inc.
155–161 James Street North, Hamilton, ON L8R 3P1
905 529 3355
inc@hamiltonartistsinc.on.ca
www.hamiltonartistsinc.on.ca
Public Hours Tuesday–Friday 12–5, Saturday 12–4

[essay]

 

In the MAIN SPACE:

March 2nd at 7 pm
Carl Brown: Film Screening & Artist Talk
[essay]

Screening two films:
Two Pictures and Blue Monet

Christ’s Church Cathedral, 252 James Street North, Hamilton

In the MAIN SPACE:

In the MAIN SPACE:

2008

In the MAIN SPACE:

A MEMBER'S EXHIBITION

Susan Davis SAJD
a body of work

Running: September 12th - October 4th, 2008

[essay]

Opening on September 12th, at 7 p.m. (James St. North Art Crawl Night)
Hamilton Artists Inc.
161 James St. North,
Hamilton, Ontario
Tel. 905-529-3355
Email: inc@hamiltonartistsinc.on.ca
Gallery Hours: Tues. to Fri. 12 p.m. - 5 p.m. and Sat. 12 p.m. to 4 p.m.

June 21 - September 9, 2008
The installation has been extended and can be viewed at Cootes Paradise until September 9, 2008.

The Urban Moorings Project
Tor Lukasik-Foss, Steve Mazza, Susan Detwiler, Noel Harding, David Acheson
Curated by Nora Hutchinson

Opening: June 21, 1 pm at Princess Point, Cootes Paradise

Artists Panel Discussion: June 26, 6-8 pm at McMaster Museum of Art

[press release] [directions to Cootes Paradise] [pictures]

More Info: The Urban Moorings Project brings together five artists to create floating sculptures and gardens on the wetlands of Cootes Parapdise. The project relfects on past communities that lived on and around Cootes Paradise. These include Shacktown, the houseboat community that was displaced before the 1950's. The sculptures are the artists' response to this history.

As the sculptures interpret our past, the gardens consider our future and reflect on current restoration projects involving native plants and wildlife.

Moorings contain hidden anchors and weathered chains. Likewise, our past and public memories are historically concealed, yet live on as vessels decreeing either emptiness or event.

The Urban Moorings Project is a co-presentation by Hamilton Artists Inc., the City of Hamilton and the Royal Botanical Gardens.

May 2 - June 7, 2008

"Entre Quatre Murs" Berlin
"Between Four Walls" Berlin

Nathalie Daoust
[essay]

Opening Friday, May 9th during the James St. North Art Crawl, from 7 to 10 pm.

More Info: The series of three-dimensional portraits, “Entre Quatre Murs”, opens thirty windows onto various imaginary universes, revealing the existential elements of everyday life. Daoust photographed each person in their home, in their everyday surroundings, capturing moments of intimacy. The contrast between Berlin’s pre-World War II interiors and the contemporary images of the women create an odd time-shift, providing a melancholic feeling of a lost world. Daoust has created a technique of printing various elements of an image on several separate layers of orthochromatic film. By superimposing and reassembling pieces of the image, as well as leaving an ethereal space between each layer, the image eventually becomes three-dimensional and complete again. This re-compositing of the image in space acts as a transparent puzzle, revealing the unknown, and leading to an imaginary visioning of the individual.

The exhibition "Entre Quatre Murs" Berlin by Nathalie Daoust is a participating venue in the CONTACT photography festival. CONTACT 2008 examines how photography shapes our understanding of the world around us and the enduring role it plays in the preservation of individual and collective memories. A wide range of images – from the epic to the everyday – look beyond the headlines to explore private and social histories.

Daoust Festival Listing
More information about the CONTACT photo festival
Women photographers of the CONTACT festival, featuring Nathalie Daoust

In the MAIN SPACE:

March 7 - April 19, 2008

Histoires
Paintings by Mario Doucette
[essay]

Please note date of artist talk has been changed due to the recent snow storm

Artist Talk: Friday, March 14, 2008 6 - 7 PM

Reception with the Artist: Friday, March 14, 2008 7 -10 PM
during the James St. North Artcrawl

Paintings may be viewed at the gallery from March 7 to April 19, 2008. Gallery Hours: Tues-Fri 12 – 5, Sat 12-4

More Info: Visiting artist Mario Doucette from Moncton, New Brunswick, evokes the imaginary world of childhood and inserts the contemporary influences of video games and cable TV within his paintings. The works are influenced by childhood memories of drawing sketches, while transfixed by television images portraying epic struggles between two armies. The artist states, “Men and machinery brought extreme violence upon each other, while we as children would ignore any reason or cause. We could distinguish each army, not by their nationality, but by the colour of their uniforms. We admired the weaponry that allowed for the destruction of the other “team”. I had perceived war as a game and not as the abominable crime of our society. Later I would learn about the destructive nature of war and the great loss of life. This discovery has transposed itself onto paper into adulthood, as the elements of combat and struggle between nations have become an ever present concern to me.”

Doucette’s primary concern has been to communicate the history of the Acadian Deportation of 1755. He began to create this body of work during a residency in France in 2004. The purpose of the residency was to create works that would deal with the impact of colonization. Doucette was moved to express “the great need to understand the incredible complexities of the human condition.” Doucette’s work combines both aspects of Acadian history popular culture in order to provide interesting juxtapositions of historical events, representations of violence, super heroes, folkloric culture and contemporary imagery.

Biography: Acadian artist Mario Doucette has shown professionally since 1998. He has shown in different mediums - drawings, paintings, performances, videos and super8 films - within the confines of exhibits and events in Canada and beyond (France, Haiti, Dominican Republic). Active in his artistic community, Mario is a member of Collectif Taupe. In 2004, a residency in Brouage, France, resulted in Histoires, a series of works half-drawing and half-painting that continues to inspire thoughts and reflections on the effects of colonization.

Bibliographie: Artiste acadien, Mario Doucette expose dans des contextes professionnels depuis 1998. Il a présenté plusieurs œuvres – dessins, peintures, performances ou films Super8 – dans le cadre d’expositions ou de présentations, tant collectives qu’individuelles, au Canada comme ailleurs dans le monde (en France, en République Dominicaine, en Haïti, etc.). Actif dans la communauté artistique de l’Acadie, Mario Doucette est membre de Taupe et de « La Factrie », un studio qu’il partage avec le même collectif d’artistes. En 2004, une résidence d’artiste à Brouage en France, donnera lieu à Histoires, une série de tableaux mi-dessins mi-peintures, qui elle, engendre cette réflexion.

In the MAIN SPACE:

February 16, 2008

Groteskes
Performance Art Collective
[brochure][performance photos]

Curated by Irene Loughlin
Produced by Hamilton Artists Inc.

at James Buttrum and Son 146 James St. North Hamilton, ON

Cheto Castellano (Santiago, Chile) 8 pm
Naufus Figueroa (Chicago, IL) 8 pm
Coco Rico (NY, NY) 9 pm
Nao Bustamante (SanFrancisco, CA) 10 pm
Nako Tako (Santiago, Chile) 11 pm
DJ Zeno 11 - 1 pm

More Info:

Visiting artists Coco Rico (NY), Cheto Castellano (Santiago, Chile), Nao Bustamante (San Francisco, CA) and Naufus Figueroa (Chicago, IL) are the first group of visiting artists to be hosted in the new artist residency space at Hamilton Artists Inc.

The works are alternately bold, hilarious, deeply meditative, and transgressive. Cheto Castellano presents a tattoo/performance art work. In the past has involved working with political exiles, tattooing them with portraits of persons who have been disappeared by state terrorism. In Canada, his intent is to tattoo the name or portrait of someone that is not necessarily disappeared to that person, but that is distant. The artist is interested in immigrants who have left behind members of their family or friends in their home countries in order to work and economically subsist in first world nations. Casetellano and the person being tattooed will wear masks are of Mexican Lucha Libre fighters, which are used to make anonymous the identities of the participant and the artist. At 11 pm, the artist will also present a separate performance under the pseudonym Nako Tako.

In a commentary about consumption, the infamous Coco Rico will lie in a bed of salmon roe and invite visitors to eat from her body. Her aim as an artist is to expose systemic injustices and to break the constricting rules of propriety through a summoning of the carnivalesque within public spaces. Coco Rico’s arte/acción and intervention performances have taken place in various settings including: Christie’s Auction House, Galería Animal de Chile, and Beijing University. Currently Coco Rico is preparing for her upcoming presidential platform in the US’s 2008 elections.

Nao Bustamante’s work often develops in relationship to a site in bizarre and humourous ways. Nao Bustamante is an internationally known performance and video artist originating from California. Her work encompasses performance art, sculpture, installation and video. Bustamante's work has been presented at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Arts, and the Kiasma Museum of Helsinki.

Guatemalan and Canadian artist Naufus Figueroa performs intimate and incidental performances, offering one on one sessions involving cigar divinations, where the artist smokes and interprets the person’s future through the abstract patterns and colour of a half-smoked cigar. Naufus’ work is influenced by his Mayan heritage, and he explores various issues relating to war and diaspora. Naufus’ work is currently featured in the exhibition “School for Young Shamans”, curated by AA Bronson at John Connelly Presents in Chelsea, New York.

In the MAIN SPACE:

Click for larger imageJanuary 11, 2008 - February 23, 2008

Stories to Myself
Corinne Duchesne

Opening reception on Jan. 11th at 7p.m.

More Info: Burlington based artist Corinne Duschene relates the female experience of grief as a socially inscribed relation. The artist has undertaken research into death and dying informed by objects of antiquity, culturally specific ritual, reliquary and iconography. Her imagery centres on symbols of landscape and biomorphous organism, human and animal, and conveys aspects of suffering through physical references and recollections of childhood memories. The passing of time is conveyed through layered materials such as transparent Mylar. This work furthers dialogue around the social conditions surrounding death and dying, often a suppressed dialogue in western cultures, and brings a specific female voice and aesthetic to the issue. The artist questions socially determined constraints upon women which prescribe grieving as a silent and private experience and brings them into the public realm through this exhibition.

2007

In the MAIN SPACE:

November 9, 2007

DIGITAL DUBSCAPES: Multi-Arts Installation/Event
part of DubFest007

Time: 8:30 pm - 12:00 midnight

More Info: Gary Barwin, Slim Volumes, Jack Street, Ritallin, Clayton Lynch, Klyde Broox, Peculiar I, Ras Mo, Nabbi Natural, D-Lishus, Hayche with Kwanza and Beny on drums. Special Guest: Alexis O'Hara and Multimedia Artists. Narrator: Klyde Broox; Producer: Morpheal; Music: Gauks and Gauks

Co-produced by Dub Poets Collective, Hamilton Artist Inc., Morpheal Productions and McMaster Multimedia Department

In the 3RD SPACE:

Click for larger imageNovember 9, 2007

YAWN
Pavel Acosta (Cuba)

Two-channel video projection, DVD, 8:26 min looped

More Info: In the piece, a man and a woman, (maybe a couple, neighbours, strangers in the street) look at each other and yawn. Their faces jump out of the facades of buildings on opposite sides of a street. The narrative is intended to be contagious. Like a virus, it contaminates passers-by. Later, they will pass on the action to others. The installation explores the boundaries between conscious acts, and one of the most irrational physiological responses. It reproduces a general public mood - the scepticism that is typical of the artist's generation. It appears simultaneously as a mirror image of daily life, and as a mirage of a likely future. Yawning, as a response to the latest terrible events in the world, could be interpreted as a sign of scepticism or equally as a form of paralysis. YAWN is intended for exposure to people in as many cities around the world as possible.

In the MAIN SPACE:

Click for larger imageSeptember 14, 2007 - November 3, 2007

Considerations: Art from Wesley Urban Ministries
Wesley Urban Ministries (Hamilton, ON)

Opening reception: September 22nd at 2-4pm.

Curated by Philip Grant
Essay by David Buckle

More Info: The Wesley Centre is a facility the helps the impoverished by providing food, shelter, counseling, health, and outreach programming, and art classes are included in this outreach. CONSIDERATIONS is an exhibition of artwork from Wesley Centre clients and the Transitional Youth programme. The exhibition is a sampling of six years of art classes, taught by local artist Philip Grant. The art program at Wesley began in January of 2001, and since then over a 1000 individual artworks have been produced. The Hamilton Artists Inc is proud to present 26 two-dimensional works of various subject matter, including dreams, nightmares, beliefs, personal experiences, self portraits, and fantasies. The art workshops are held Saturday afternoons between 1-4 pm at their downtown Hamilton facility. This art programme has successfully proven to build self esteem and confidence for clients from the community.

In the 3RD SPACE:

Click for larger imageSeptember 14, 2007 - November 3, 2007

ISPIRALL
Fleur-Ange Lamothe

Opening reception: September 14th at 7pm.

More Info: Fleur-Ange Lamothe's life has taken a new turn. After leaving behind a 30-year career in education and her role as principal, she is developing her 40-year-old photographic passion. This recent artist now works with performance, photo documentation, photography, painting and installation. Fleur-Ange's interests lie in the realm of personal history, cultural history and mythology as they create a context for women and especially for herself as a woman artist. Her 2006 artist's inquiry on the island of Malta led to a refocusing on the Spiral as a design. The "Ispirall" project (ispirall is Maltese for spiral) resulted in imagery that explores personally significant aspects of Life. She uses four concepts to organize and investigate the "Ispirall" images: fertility, birth, death and rebirth. The final project includes photographic self-portraits of ninety-four projected images. She is pleased to share this project, which has previously be shown in Valetta, Malta and Paris, Ontario and, invites feedback from artists and viewers alike.

In the MAIN SPACE:

Click for larger imageJune 15, 2007 - July 21, 2007

Attila Richard Lukacs (Vancouver, BC)

Opening reception: June 15th at 7pm.

More Info: Lukacs' work often includes dramatic depictions of skinheads and labourers, contemplates the male nude, classical painting, and issues of social rebellion. His jarring and sometimes violent subject matter is infused with contemporary and art historical references. In the past his artwork has shocked and provoked a generation of painters and critics alike. Hamilton Artists Inc. and Hamilton Pride are proud to present a look at some never before seen work.

In the 3RD SPACE:

Click for larger imageJune 8 - July 21, 2007

By Any Means Necessary.
Mark Byk (Hamilton, ON)

Opening reception: June 8, 2007 at 7pm (part of the James North Art Crawl)

More Info: MAKE LOVE F**K WORK

In the MAIN SPACE:

Click for larger imageJune 1, 2007 - June 8, 2007

Visiting Artist Hakim Abdul Onitolo
from London, England

Reception: June 8, 2007 at 7pm (part of the James North Art Crawl) + Performance art work at 7-8pm

More Info: Born in Liverpool, England, Hakim Onitolo is currently completing his PhD research at the University of the West of England, Centre for Fine Print Research. This facility is the UK's premier academic print department renowned for print innovation and experimentation. Hakim is currently represented by the Manuela Hofer Print Gallery, London and recently presented a lecture regarding his work at the Subtle Technologies Conference in Toronto. Hakim will be presenting a performance art work with local artist Irene Loughlin at the Hamilton Artists Inc. on June 8th during the James Street North Art Crawl from 7-8pm.

In the MAIN SPACE:

Click for larger imageApril 13, 2007 - May 19, 2007

Environs
Colina Maxwell, Matt McInnes, John Smith and Mirela Zdjelaric
curated by Jim Riley

Opening reception: April 13 at 7pm (James North Art Crawl) + artists talk at 8pm

More Info: This is the culmination of three years of research into emerging, artistic voices within the Hamilton area. The exhibition examines how artists' environments influence their art practice. The exhibition explores the influences of rural and urban Hamilton neighbourhoods and the people that may be met within these environs. Media used by the artists include an interactive computer installation, large scale drawings, giclée and digital photography.

In the 3RD SPACE:

Click for larger imageApril 13, 2007 - May 19, 2007

Anatomy of the Spirit
Gerten Basom

Opening reception: April 13 at 7pm (James North Art Crawl)

More Info: Colour and movement feature predominantly in these works, acting as a portal into inquiry. Combining collage and a collage-like approach to painting, generated an intuitive response to symbolic mark making. Each canvas acts as a visual form of a journal page communicating strong energy, emotion, tension and flow. A call to the feminine spirit to reveal archetypal wisdom resulted from trusting inner guidance. The study of repeated, rhythmic patterns combined with technical application, emerged inner landscapes onto canvas. The collective unconscious or morphic field illuminated the mapping of historically common and invented patterns. Out of chaotic movement came a new order.

In the MAIN SPACE:

Click for larger imageFebruary 9, 2007 - March 17, 2007

The Hysteria Chronicles
Bev Pike (Winnipeg)

Opening reception: February 9 at 8pm
Artist talk: February 9 at 7:30pm

More Info: Bev Pike's twenty-foot-long gouache-on-paper works depict familiar fabrics in gargantuan proportions. Her work speaks of experience but she documents the liminal experience of being out of the fabric and of visera, traces of the body and its history in the fabric after the figure has abandoned it.

In the 3RD SPACE:

Click for larger imageFebruary 9, 2007 - March 17, 2007

Elevation
E.H.ReisenBerger

Opening reception: February 9 at 8pm

More Info: Our experience of horizontal and vertical environments differs. How does it effect the equation of Identity and Place? In her recent work Erika ReisenBerger fuses emotion and knowledge, finding references in areas as far apart as music and maps.

In the MAIN SPACE:

Click for larger imageJanuary 2, 2007 - January 20, 2007

Edgey
Fred Bilanzola Retrospective

More Info: Co-production with Art Gallery of Hamilton and Carnagie Gallery. In memory of Ferdinando Bilanzola (1956-2001).

In the 3RD SPACE:

January 23 - February 6, 2007

Y.E.A.H! (Young Emerging Artists of Hamilton)

More Info:Y.E.A.H! stands for "Young Emerging Artists of Hamilton" and is the 2nd annual juried exhibition of BFA students of McMaster University, in order to foster relations between the university and Hamilton's strong downtown arts community. The exhibition is juried by art history students of McMaster, professors, and the Hamilton Artists Inc.

This year's student exhibition includes: Candace Osborne Bell, Catherine Farrell, Laura Marotta, Megan Smith, and Laura Zajacz

Reception: February 3, 2007 at 7pm

2006

In the MAIN SPACE:

Click for larger imageSemptember 8 - October 14, 2006

Tune In, Turn On, Bleach Out
Marcia Huyer (Victoria B.C.)

More Info: Marcia Huyer creates large installations using Tyvek®, fluorescent lights and fans. Tyvek®, the material she uses, is a high-density polyethelene fabric used to increase air and water resistance in construction applications and to create what its manufacturer, Dupont, calls “limited use protective garments” worn either for ‘dirty jobs’ or in hazardous environments. Huyer’s cloud-memories of childhood embedded in the fabric and its installation allow us to elude danger albeit briefly and embrace the illusion positively. Her optimism enables an alternative view of fabricated space as a transcendent vista.

In the 3RD SPACE:

September 8 - October 14, 2006

Demolished School Project
Douglas Drake (Hamilton, ON)

More Info: The Demolished School Project is a replica model of the now demolished 1910 Tweedsmuir School of Hamilton, Ontario. This model is formed out of actual bricks reclaimed from the wreaking site. Also, painted on the gallery wall is a layout of the school, including rooms and hallways. Visitors to the gallery are encouraged to write on top of this blueprint, about their opinions on historical preservation of Hamilton's abandoned historic buildings. The installation begins with an object, yet gestures towards an interactive wall-piece that encourages critical debate -- destruction as a beginning for dialogue. It is this play on originality, interactivity, historical conservation, debate, destruction, construction that is the focus of this conceptual installation.

In the MAIN SPACE:

Click for larger imageOctober 27 - November 25, 2006

Annual Members' Show

More Info: Various Artists from the Hamilton Region.

2005

In the MAIN SPACE:

Click for larger imageJune 24 - July 30, 2005

Don't Let Them Founder On Ya Bi
Kevin Friedrich

More Info: Kevin Friedrich explores the possibility of creating a prairie identity in art and the contemporary world. He does this in two ways. Friedrich combines painting styles that include pop, classical, kitch and magic realism. He then transofrms these art practices into specific regional ideologies using tractors and other farm machinery to represent class humbleness and simplicity.

In the 3RD SPACE:

January 14 - February 19, 2005

No exhibition information


2004

November 28 - December 18, 2004
Opening: Sunday, November 28, 3 - 5pm

2004 Annual Members Show

Featured Artists
Photos


Click for larger imageOctober 15 - November 20, 2004

All At Once
Scott Carruthers

More Info: All at once is an installation of drawn images that simulate how information is transmitted and received via mass and digital media. Exploring the notion of information as environment, the artist intends to cover the entire gallery with drawings.


Click for larger imageSeptember 9 - October 9, 2004

Suroundings
Eric Demers [Montreal, PQ]

More Info: Artist, Eric Demers paints industrial landscapes that are meant to attract and repulse. The artist strives to provoke a relationship between the viewer and his heavily textured canvases, which appear palpable and visceral in order to exacerbate the normal prohibitions on touch.


Click for larger imageApril 2 - May 8, 2004

An Installation by Fariba Samsami
Fariba Samsami [Montreal, PQ]

More Info: An Installation by Fariba Samsami is a series of sculptures made entirely of woven fabric. Scarves, veils, chador, manto and cloth are metaphors for the conventions of the women of Iran. This installation pays homage to these women who traditionally have been taught to be voiceless and untouchable.


2003

Click for larger imageOctober 17 - November 22, 2003

More Experiments In Futility
Michael Wickerson [London, ON]

More Info: More Experiments in Futility is an elaborate installation featuring dysfunctional tools and complex yet useless pulley suspension systems. The artist often maintains and alters his work during the exhibition, adding a performative aspect to the process. The juxtaposition of function and dysfunction is what fuels the artist's work.


Click for larger imageSeptember 5 - October 11, 2003

In Stereo
Rebecca Hackerman, Real Patry

More Info: In Stereo is a two-person exhibition investigating the use of stereo photography. Patry's floor installation Refuge features a dozen sleeping cots screen printed with 3D images of nature and shelter. Hakermann's wall-mounted Stereoscopes depict dream images which reference Alice in Wonderland. Both share an aesthetic sensibility and affinity for obsolescent and photo-reproductive technology.


 

June 27 - August 2

Superstition II
FASTWÜRMS [Creemore, ON]

More Info: The Fastwürms collective, the shared authorship of Dai Skuse and Kim Kossi, are nationally recognized for their original and off-kilter installations, videos and performance art. Elaborating on their Superstition project, first exhibited at Gallery TPW, the Fastwürms expand on the original photo-installation with a site-specific video installation and performance piece.

 

May 16 - June 21

Lucida
Santo Barbieri, Tracey Bowen, Andrew Szatmari, Andrew Wright

More Info: Lucida presents four artists who utilize a combination of high and low tech methods in romantic, documentary and abstract ways to address the poetic within photogaphic practice. Co-curated with essay by Andrew Szatmari.

 

April 4 - May 10

Bandona
Jacques Clement [Montreal, PQ]

More Info: Clement process involves hundreds of small figure drawings on paper that are affixed together and then folded into accordian-like murals. These visual journals are mounted directly onto the gallery walls to form a kind of giant origami. The sheer physicality of the drawings juxtaposed with the tentative nature of the materials and the miniature drawings involved, push the drawings into a sculptural arena not unlike the drawing installations of Ed Pien.

 

February 21 - March 29

Useless
David Poolman [Vancouver, BC]
Tanya Read [Toronto, ON]

More Info: A two-person exhibition featuring an installation by Poolman and animations by Read. Poolman's installation Apparently/Apparently Not is composed of over 300 individually cast toy-size headless creatures traversing the gallery floor. Read's series of short animations feature Mr. Nobody a sub-par cartoon character trapped in a perpetual loop of activity without achievement. Both artists investigate progress as an illusion, with each of their respective works representing a metaphor for futility and failure.

 

January 10 - February 15

Julene
Ernest Harris Jr. [St. Catharines, ON]

More Info: This series of large-scale paintings mimics and reproduces facsimiles of collages culled from childhood family photos. By producing photocopies of these photos and then transcribing them into paintings, Harris seeks to define the sense of displacement he felt when he moved from Grenada to Canada at an early age. The work is about alienation, colonization and how memory eventually becomes customized within new surroundings.

2002

October 11 - November 16

366 CONFESSIONS
David Grenier [Toronto, ON]'

More Info: As part of a confessional process, Grenier has hand-stitched small drawings onto 366 sweaters, each a varying shade of yellow - one for each day of a leap year. Conceptually, the work explores images of marginalization, depicting the transgression of homosexual identity as both a choice and a social construct. This diary of sweaters is both humorous and poignant, alluding to the guilt and stereotyping associated with sexual identification.

 

September 6 - October 4

Wordsites
Alan Flint [Hamilton, ON]

More Info: This installation of "word sculptures" is a direct response to cultural concerns regarding the use of technology for mass reproduction and communication. Constructed out of reflective Plexiglas each word mirrors the other, forming a maze of text and meaning built to human scale. This installation of interlocking words and letters intentionally echoes the sentiments of the 1970's poetry concrete movement.

 

June 21 - July 27

Membrum
Maurice Spira [Gibbons, BC]

More Info: A persistent political commentary informs the content and production of Spira's body of paintings print-work. The oppression of authoritative regimes, the sexual repression of religion and the proliferation of increasingly Kafkaesque bureaucracies are central to his anarchistic brand of surrealism and political protest.

 

March 29 - May 4

Allegories
Catherine Heard [Toronto, ON]

More Info: Allegories is an installation by Catherine Heard [Toronto] featuring a series of 4 wax figures which form part of a complex tableaux of surreal images and motifs. Traditional pedestals are replaced with stacks of books referencing the dichotomy between body, mind and spirit. The figures – Philosopher, Book of Knowledge, Poet and Liar – illustrate aspects of both fear and desire juxtaposed against an accumulation of books referencing philosophy, religion, mythology and medicine.

 

February 15 - March 23

Configuration
Matthew Carver [Toronto, ON]
Christina Sealey [Hamilton, ON]

More Info: Taking a phenomenological approach to her painting, Sealey positions rigorously rendered figures as components of their specific local surroundings. Carver's paintings on the other hand are anamorphic, and function by mirroring purposefully distorted figures onto objects with reflective surfaces such as toasters and fire extinguishers, to perceptually complete his images. Each artist explores the boundaries of traditional figurative painting with their respective approach.

 

January 4 - February 9

Intersections
Kelly Richardson [Toronto, ON]
Nicole Sanches [Burnaby, BC]

More Info: A post-pop sensibility connects the artwork of Kelly Richardson [Toronto, ON] and Nicole Sanches [Vancouver, BC]. Each artist takes an eclectic approach to their use of appropriation and imagery, utilizing deliberately common or obtuse reference points for their artistic production. Photos and videos by Richardson such as her Supernatural Series appropriate still images of landscape from 80’s era horror movies, while Sanches references the shape and colour of jaw-breaker candies as they dissolve to create a series of psychedelic micro-landscapes. Together, the artworks comment on the magic of the banal and the everyday.

2001

October 19 - November 24

Girls' Own
Eliza Griffiths [Ottawa, ON]
Dana Holst [Edmonton, AB]
Bonnie Lewis [Toronto, ON]

More Info: Girls’ Own is a group exhibition examining the links common to the work of these three painters. Each artist presents sophisticated, sarcastic and witty commentaries regarding both the social etiquette expected of young women and mediated notions of romance. The paintings often expose the dark underbelly of these norms, portraying the menacing or petulant poses of young women and children – sometimes isolated (Dana Holst), exaggerated (Bonnie Lewis) or set in clichéd domestic situations (Eliza Griffiths).

 

September 7 - October 1

Mrs. Grandillo's Museum
Chriseddy [Hamilton, ON]

More Info: A series of museum cases in which the found contents of a suitcase belonging to a Mrs. Grandilla (1800-1960) will be documented and displayed. This installation invites queries about the photographs and found relics within and their relationship to the ideologies of memory and intervention. Hidden narratives become public and open to interpretation in the artist's re-rendering of the given objects.

 

June 22 - August 18

Two Stages: Fraser Stables [Houston, TX]
Expect Disappointment: Human Faux Pas [Vancouver, BC]
Photophobia 3 [cross-Canada]
Celluloid: LIFT [cross-Canada]

More Info:
[Two Stages: Fraser Stables]
Employing dual screen video projections and multiple audio tracks, the artist juxtaposes an image suggestive of migrant workers being driven around in the back of a pick-up truck with a disjunctive and staged performance, involving spectators looking into the space through a closed window. Ultimately, Stables work concern itself with the ways in which peripheral vision operates while reflecting upon the growing disjunction between people and their physical surroundings.


[Human Faux Pas] The Human Faux Pas is an irreverent performance art collective based in Vancouver touring across Canada and the United States this summer. They are coming to Hamilton to present Expect Disappointment, an entire performance that takes place inside of a 10 foot square inflatable cube, enabling the performance to occur outside under any weather conditions. In the spirit of previous off-site performances by the Moncton/Calgary based Trunk© collective (1999) and Montreal based Advice Bunny (2000), the intent is to expose a new audience to performance art by bringing the work out of the gallery and to the people attending the Aquafest summer festival. You can also check them out at www.humanfauxpas.com on-line. The Human Faux Pas performance art tour is funded by an Inter-Arts grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.


[Photophobia 3] The third annual outdoor screening will feature a 90-minute program of short experimental film and video projected outdoors onto the south wall of the Art Gallery of Hamilton. The screening will include recent works by film and video producers from across Canada, including Michael Balser, Pierre-Yves Cruaud, Lisa Hayes, Peter Karuna, Charles Officer, Su Rynard, Kika Thorne, Ian Toews, Jessie Wallace and others. This event is a project partnership of the Art Gallery of Hamilton, Hamilton Artists Inc., Hamilton & Region Arts Council and Trinity Square Video. Photophobia is funded by an Ontario Arts Council Special Projects Grant.


[Celluloid: Lift] A screening of independent films produced by members of LIFT - the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto. The evening will feature a selected screening of short films along with a short presentation by LIFT Director Barb Sniderman about of the works in the show and the recent 20th anniversary program. This 3-hour screening will feature screenings of both The State of Celluloid: The Present Screening and Self and Celluloid: The Future Screening. The two programs feature short films by John Greyson, Judith Doyle, Mike Hoolboom, Helen Lee, Alexi Manis, Wrik Mead, Bruce McDonald, Carolyn Wong and others. The LIFT screening tour is funded by a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.

 

January 12 - June 16

Obsessive Behaviour
Doomsday: David Acheson [Toronto, ON]
Midas: Susan Detwiler [Moffatt, ON]
Trace: Leah Dector [Vancouver, BC]
Argument #5: Tom Bendtsen [Toronto, ON]

More Info: An investigative series examining compulsive, repetitive or accumulative modes of production in contemporary arts practice.

[Doomsday : January 12 - February 10] An installation of two larger-than-life sculptures deconstructing the notion of the classical heroic archetype. Using the ubiquitous figures of Superman and Wonder Woman, the artist constructs a tableau depicting each of these popular super-hero icons in a state of crisis, reflecting on the fears and anxieties present in society at the turn of the millennium.


[Midas : February 16 - March 24] A series of cast aluminum sculptures which use roadkill as a motif. The castings represent the artists continued use of dissection as a means of revealing the hidden essence or character of a thing, and as a metaphor for forensic examination. The works also comment directly on the low importance placed on wildlife habitats in the wake of massive urban sprawl.


[Trace : March 30 - May 5] Using teeth as a metaphor for identity, the artist displays delicate lead casts of individual bite patterns alongside collections of plaster plates documenting physical and biographical information culled from over 400 individuals. The investigation of this very private yet public body area posits teeth as a crisis point between personal and cultural constructions of identity.


[Arguments : May 11 - June 16] A site-specific installation incorporating architecture and the accumulation of knowledge as a reference point. Featuring a monumental yet fragile tower constructed entirely out of hundreds of books, the work suggests both literal and metaphorical interpretations based on the ordering of books by title, theme, content and the inevitability or random association.

 

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